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Monday, 14 January 2013

KH8/M1KTA

Needed to be up 08:00 - 18:00 UTC or 17:00 - 07:00 Local time so nearly all the operation was overnight.

Local sunset was about 6pm local time with dust between 5:30pm and 7pm, total darkness after that until runrise near 6am.

I visited several stores in Pago Pago, a hardware store just past the MacDonalds on the road towards PAgo PAgo centre from Sadies where I bought the battery jump leads I used to recharge the KX3 batteries.

The SUV I rented was from Dollar. You REALLY need to arrange rental cars well before arriving as they usually all get rented out between the flights (bi-weekly) into and out of American Samoa.

On the North side of American Somoa main island, north east shore beach nights of 8th, 9th and 10th October. QRV 07:00 UTC 8th (about 3am local time masts broke), 05:00 UTC 9th (mast broke again during night) 05:39 RV9CPB was first QSO followed by UN7TW and 06:02 UTC on 10th.

Both before 8th and after 10th I operated from the South shore near Sadies.

Long way for 3 nights operating :-)

Similar to 6W and C5 operating for 15m and 20m frequencies were:

14.055 CW although I was QRV 14.015-14.035 as well (G3SXW recommendation).
21.055 CW although I was QRV 21.015-21.035 as well (G3SXW recommendation).

The beach location would be great for 40m, 80m and 160m but when I was there the night time winds were too strong to allow me to support the 10m poles I had taken for a phased 40m/80m antenna and broke, if I had planned better before hand (trip was very hastily put together) I would have made sure I had adequate guys. There is plenty of availability of stranded insulated wire, e.g. US mains zip cord can be obtained in long lengths from numerous locations as well as various guy cord as the island main export is tuna so there are hardware stores selling all manner of suitable materials. The local garages and car sales all have surplus, some brand new but not current model, car and larger vehicle batteries as there is no local recycling so a power supply that is suitable to float charge one of these batteries might be advisable. Note they WILL BE much more expensive that might be obtained in EU/UK or US. I never found a source of long poles although it was possible to obtain lengths of Aluminum and Steel tubing up to 2" diameter from some of the hardware stores.

It would seem that a number of business were still effected by the 2009 Tsunami that ruined much of the island. See this for an idea what it was like:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riomze4qKvg

Operating location from a top in alps c2600m

Now this was a perfect SOTA location, I stayed on top overnight and used the flag pole to my right to support a 40m/20m dipole, you can see the fixture I connected to, the little ring clamp, as soon as the cable car stopped for the night out came the radio gear, it even snowed! If I had taken 2m yagi would have been amazing location as line of sight was > 80miles, the Eiger and Jungfau (Bernese Oberland group) are in the photo over my right shoulder. Temp dropped to below minus 15 but the morning operating the grey line was fun 100 or so QSO SSB qrp as HB9/M1KTA/P.